Notes from a Jewish Diary

My shaving my long sideburns that night was an act of protest, and the lather of both can be attributed to Lawrence Welk. Had my chair been less deep and less comfortable, I’d have changed the channel. But it wasn’t and now, here he was in my livingroom, “uh-two,” by God, a talking cornstalk. I recall thinking a smile, a patronizing one of course, and thinking too, let him be, watch him awhile, you’ll better understand those Reader’s Digest subscribers who voted Nixon.

He played an old Jimmy Dorsey number in the Jimmy Dorsey style. I remembered it; he played it well. Next came Clyde McCoy’s “Sugar Blues,” trembling trombone, the works; it was good. He recreated the swing and the blues of the Thirties and early Forties, and as warmly and appealingly as a serendipitously found old photograph album. His music wafted me back to my youth. Finally a Tommy Dorsey favorite—three vocalists, two crew-cut All-America types, and a pretty pert- nosed and freckled songstress. That was it! I rose, strode into the bathroom and in a declaration of comradeship with my own generation and its style, I shaved an inch from my sideburns, thereby saying no! to creeping hippieism.

NP

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Nathan Perlmutter

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My shaving my long sideburns that night was an act of protest, and the lather of both can be attributed to Lawrence Welk. Had my chair been less deep and less comfortable, I’d have changed the channel. But it wasn’t and now, here he was in my livingroom, “uh-two,” by God, a talking cornstalk. I recall thinking a smile, a patronizing one of course, and thinking too, let him be, watch him awhile, you’ll better understand those Reader’s Digest subscribers who voted Nixon.

He played an old Jimmy Dorsey number in the Jimmy Dorsey style. I remembered it; he played it well. Next came Clyde McCoy’s “Sugar Blues,” trembling trombone, the works; it was good. He recreated the swing and the blues of the Thirties and early Forties, and as warmly and appealingly as a serendipitously found old photograph album. His music wafted me back to my youth. Finally a Tommy Dorsey favorite—three vocalists, two crew-cut All-America types, and a pretty pert- nosed and freckled songstress. That was it! I rose, strode into the bathroom and in a declaration of comradeship with my own generation and its style, I shaved an inch from my sideburns, thereby saying no! to creeping hippieism.